It has been a couple years since I changed the look and feel here at CMSReport.com. While my current theme, LiteJazz from RoopleTheme, has served me well the past couple years, it's time for a change.

BuddyPress 1.0.1 was released yesterday. This point release fixes a number of security issues in the 1.0 version so it is a critical upgrade for everyone currently running BuddyPress. There is also a number of other bug fixes so please review the release history for more information.

Kieran Lal, Acquia, recently had the opportunity to give a presentation on Drupal in front of an information system's course at San Francisco State College. It's a good video for anyone that wants to learn everything they possibly can about Drupal and given only one hour to do so. I would have loved to seen more questions and answers on the video as Kieran is one of those people that responds very well when people present him with good questions and good ideas.

WordPress 2.8, currently under development as a beta, is expected to be completed and released in a week or two. Until then, you can check out some of the documentation at wordpress.org to find all of the new goodies being added to this latest version of the blogging software.

Some of the highlights for WordPress 2.8 include:

Raphael Mudge sent us an email on his latest project, After the Deadline.

I'm a computer scientist working to fill a gap in current CMS feature sets.  It isn't a new social or wireless feature.  I'm working to bring spelling, style, and grammar checking to web applications.  The technology is available for WordPress and the Open Source TinyMCE editor.

After the Deadline is an exciting plugin that adds a much needed feature often missing in most CMS rich text editors. After the Deadline currently supports plugins for TinyMCE and Wordpress. Some additional bullet points behind the plugin include: 

• Corrects spelling with 90% accuracy
• Checks 1,500 words for misuse
• Finds grammar errors
• Improves writing style
• All plugins are licensed under the LGPL

CoreMedia announced today that the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has launched a sophisticated interactive content portal powered by CoreMedia’s CMS that harnesses the power of social media. The name of AAMC's new site is MedEdPortal.

“AAMC’s desire to create an interactive medical community that facilitates the exchange of educational content is a project that CoreMedia was excited about and well suited to enable,” said René Hermes, VP Marketing of CoreMedia. “The combination of our market leading CMS and extensible social software features made CoreMedia the obvious choice for AAMC.”

AAMC’s MedEdPORTAL is a free online peer-reviewed publication service provided in partnership with the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). MedEdPORTAL was designed to promote educational collaboration by facilitating the open exchange of peer-reviewed teaching resources such as tutorials, virtual patients, simulation cases, lab guides, videos, podcasts, and assessment tools. While MedEdPORTAL's primary audience includes medical professionals, health educators and learners around the globe, it is also freely accessible to the general public.

I found a great list on the blog/news section for the ocPortal CMS, 10 IE compatibility problems that you might not have realized. While the post is related to ocPortal, the Internet Explorer compatibility issues likely will apply to any CMS viewed by the browser.

I forgot who sent the tweet on Twitter but I was pointed to some very interesting research (2005) posted at the Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge site.

Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?

Using formal economic modelling, professors Pankaj Ghemawat and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell consider the competitive dynamics of the software wars between Microsoft and open source.